


we can work this out

by masi



Category: Borderlands
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-12 22:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5683840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masi/pseuds/masi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life was simpler for Rhys when he was climbing the corporate ladder and didn’t know Fiona and wasn’t left in charge of her hat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we can work this out

There’ve been many strange and alarming things that have happened to Rhys over the years. Last year was particularly shocking and terrible, what with being betrayed multiple times, almost losing his body to a heinous criminal, and having to literally rip himself apart and then remake himself again. But this morning is a whole new level of strange. Never, in his wildest dreams, did he think he would wake up one day to find himself wearing Fiona’s hat on his head.

He sits up and examines it to make sure it definitely is Fiona’s. It looks like it could belong to her. A bowler hat, beat up around the edges. The felt is scuffed up here and there, and a few of the places have been filled in with black fabric paint. He sniffs the inside. Yup, deep inside the hat, it smells like Fiona’s shampoo, a soapy no-nonsense kind of smell, almost unnoticeable because she can’t afford to leave a trace when she’s carrying out one of her con jobs, which is almost always.

Rhys is still sitting on the couch in his office and examining the hat when Vaughn walks into the room.

Rhys immediately puts the hat underneath his ass. “Hi, Bro,” he says.

Vaughn asks, “Do I even want to know?”

“I don’t know what you don’t want to know. What do you not want to know?” 

Rhys puts the hat back in his lap and tries to puff it back out. Fiona is going to kill him.

“What?” Vaughn frowns and then scratches his beard. “You’re not making any sense. And what are you doing here this early? With Fiona’s hat?” He is beginning to sound alarmed. “I thought you had something important to take care of? Isn’t that why you left the party last night? What’s going on, Rhys?”

“It’s a long story.” Rhys puts the bowler hat next to his computer. “I’ll tell you all about it sometime. Later.”

Vaughn frowns. “Later or never? Hey, didn’t Fiona call you a corporate shill last week and tell you to take a long walk off of a short cliff?”

“So many questions!” Rhys gets up to make a pot of coffee. “Let’s relax and try to enjoy the day, huh? There’s money to be made. People to yell at and be yelled at by.”

“Wasn’t Fiona trying to step on your face just last night at the party?”

“We just like to joke like that. Ha ha,” Rhys says. 

Vaughn picks the hat up and examines it. He says, “Look, she has her name here.”

Rhys takes the hat back from Vaughn quickly. The name is embroidered on the ribbon, near the back. The stitches are almost the exact same red as the ribbon, even, and kind of pretty.

“She probably won’t want you to see that,” Rhys says. “She flips out whenever people touch her things.”

“No, only when you do,” Vaughn says.

That is probably true, Rhys reflects. Fiona does seem perfectly okay when Gortys goes through her stuff. “Curiosity is a wonderful thing,” she was saying the other day, as Gortys dismantled a Master Remote Fiona acquired on a recent con job. “Look how adorable she is.”

“The important thing is,” Rhys says to Vaughn, “Fiona and I are friends now. And the two of us make a good team! No one can resist my charm for long. Want some coffee?”

“Sure, why not.”

Vaughn waits for the machine to finish churning out a pot of coffee, and then for Rhys to pour some out into two large mugs before asking, “So, are you friend friends or _friend_ friends?”

Rhys considers for a moment. He could spin out a tale about how yes, he and Fiona have become _friend_ friends, and the reason why he left the party early was to rendezvous with Fiona here, and they’ve just had a night of awesome sex, and he can’t remember the details too well, but that’s how the hat ended up here.

But, when he opens his mouth, he can see Fiona’s very beautiful and very menacing eyes in his mind’s eye. A shiver goes down his spine.

“What about you, Bro?” Rhys says instead. “Found anyone you like? Someone who likes crunching numbers as much as you do?”

Vaughn sighs. “Fine,” he says, “you don’t have to tell me what you were doing last night, but, are you sure you two are doing okay? You were acting funny at the party, and you both left early.”

“We’ve never been better,” Rhys says, loudly and in his most confident tone.

Instead of looking reassured, however, Vaughn, has a thoughtful expression on his face. He is becoming increasingly more of a take-charge guy. Some things change you, like getting a hit put out on you, and getting stabbed with pure adrenaline by a person who has never held a needle in her hand before, and having to participate in That Big Chariot Race Thing Where Everyone Dies. Rhys has a feeling that Vaughn is going to talk to Fiona, maybe give advice that he thinks will lead to a more harmonious love between them. This will cause Fiona to become very angry with Rhys.

“Fine, I’ll tell you what happened last night,” Rhys says. “Because you’re my buddy, right, Vaughn?”

“Hold on, let me get some breakfast from the cafeteria,” Vaughn says.

Ten minutes later, with a stack of donuts and bagels between them, Rhys tells his story.

 

//THE STORY

Fiona is a busy woman. She is currently trying to con a treasure map out of a guy who is passing through town. She wants to find that treasure and then sell it. One can never have too much money. Money is more important than things like relationships, especially relationships with corporate scum like Rhys.

Fiona spends only about two hours at the party Vaughn is hosting at his house to celebrate the six-months anniversary of recovering Gortys, finding the Vault of the Traveler, and seeing Sasha almost die. She is dressed for the job too (and not for a casual party) in a tie, dress pants, and a blazer with three pockets; her turquoise nail polish bright and shiny; her bangs arranged carefully beneath the brim of her hat; her stilettos pointy enough to wound. She barely glances at Rhys.

But when the deal goes south, the first person she calls is Rhys. That is why Rhys leaves the party early. He goes to the meeting place and heroically rescues Fiona. After some witty one-liners and coordinated fighting, the two of them leave the banquet hall, map in hand, smiles a mile wide on their faces.

THE END//

 

Vaughn scratches his beard. “Okay,” he says. “That was kind of a short tale, for you anyway, no offense, but okay. But how did you end up in this office?”

“Oh, that. Right.” Rhys laughs. “Well, after we left the hall, we realized that the guy Fiona is conning was following us, so Fiona decided that she needed to act fast so that she could get the treasure before the other guy did. She also wanted to change her outfit to throw the mark off. This building was closest, and I told her that you keep spare clothes in your office for your friends, so we came here. She changed and left. Guess she forgot her hat. And then I started to feel sleepy, after all my heroics you know, so I went to sleep right here.”

“Oh.” Vaughn gives him a kind smile. “Sorry I jumped to conclusions. I thought you would have a more romantic explanation.”

“That’s okay, buddy. Look at me, finally having an unadventurous, not-bizarre, unromantic life. I have work to do. We all do. Goals to accomplish. Dreams to fulfill. I love my job.”

***

Rhys does love his job, but to be perfectly honest, he was hoping that Fiona would invite him along on her treasure hunt last night. It would’ve been like old times, the two of them finding themselves in the middle of all kinds of perilous situations and then saving each other at the very last moment. 

After Vaughn leaves the office, Rhys picks up Fiona’s hat again and stares at her name. It’s really weird that she left the hat behind. He can’t get over it. She wasn’t too happy with him last night, wasn’t in the kind of mood that would indicate that she would eventually leave one of her most prized possessions with him. He remembers the day she sacrificed her previous bowler hat to save themselves, how reluctant she had been at first.

Rhys leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. In his mind’s eye, he sees the annoyed look Fiona gave him when he first stepped through Vaughn’s door last night. He sees himself standing in front of her, handsome, laughing, flirting in a gracious, charming way.

 

//THE STORY - VERSION: MORE DETAILS ADDED

“Going somewhere, Fiona?” Rhys asks, as soon as he sees her in Vaughn’s front hall. “Or are you about to con someone at this party?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Fiona replies.

“I’m just trying to be friendly,” Rhys says. “It’s what friends do. You should try it sometimes.”

Fiona rolls her eyes. And then she says, glancing at the bouquet of flowers in his hand, “Those are nice. Did you pick them out all by yourself?”

“Of course I did,” Rhys says, and then hands them to her immediately.

He sees the little card sticking out of the bouquet only after Fiona’s long fingers have curled around the stems. The bouquet was given to him by one of his employees, just as he was rushing out of the office, and he brought it along, thinking that he would give it to Vaughn, who would put it in a vase somewhere. Add a little color to the room. But it’s too late now. He can’t exactly ask Fiona to hand it back, not after she called the flowers “nice.” He hopes that these are friendship-and-admiration flowers and not anything with a risky message, like “I love you.”

“You like them?” Rhys asks, as he quickly plucks the card out of the bouquet.

Fiona grabs the card out of his hand and reads it out loud, “For Mr. Rhys. Thank you for all the work you do at Atlas. Sincerely, John.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” he says. “I could’ve given those to someone else, right?”

“So, why did you give them to me?”

“As a thank you,” he says. “For all the work you’ve done when we were trying to find the Vault. All of your awesome driving. That kind of thing.”

“Yeah, okay,” Fiona says, but then she smiles.

It takes him several minutes to recover from the smile. By that time, Sasha has joined them, and the two sisters are examining the bouquet while having a hushed argument, with confusing words like “you could do better” and “a treasure map to his pants.” Then Sasha, smiling sweetly, says, “We should go on a double date sometime, Rhys. Fi, me, you, and my newest gun. You haven’t met it yet. You two should get properly acquainted.”

“A date?” Rhys says.

“There’s the food,” Fiona says loudly. “Wow, Vaughn didn’t hold back. Come on, Sasha.”

The night gets progressively weirder. Fiona insults him only two more times, and she tries to step on his face just once. Gortys gives a speech during dinner, thanking everyone for continuing to be her friend and saying that she loves her “Mom and Dad” while looking at Fiona and him. Then, after Vaughn turns on the disco lights, and before Rhys can even say the word “dance,” Fiona tries to insert herself between Janey and Athena, who are standing very close together in the middle of the living room floor.

“Relax,” Rhys shouts over the music. “Like I would ask you to dance. I don’t want you to scuff up my nice shoes with that weird shuffle thing you call dancing.”

“That's funny, coming from someone who doesn’t have even half the grace as Loader Bot does,” Fiona says.

“That’s not true.”

“Is so.”

Athena shoves Fiona into his arms at that moment, and Janey says, laughing, “Get a room you two.”

Rhys looks down at Fiona, her cheeks a dull red, her mouth and green eyes wide open in surprise. He is also surprised. And he is alarmed because his left arm is pressed against her stomach, which feels soft and warm, and his prosthetic right hand has ended up much lower on her backside than he had ever thought it would be allowed to go.

“Let go,” Fiona says.

“Of course,” Rhys says, releasing her immediately. “And you should know, that, you know, what happened right there, wasn’t my fault, and I wouldn’t dance with you for all the money and treasure in the world. It’s Athena’s fault. Your mentor literally pushed you-”

“I have to go.” Fiona heads for the door.

“Yeah, I know, you have work to do,” Rhys says as he follows her out into the hallway. “You know, it seems like you’re getting a tad too obsessed with money, even more than before. Can’t even make time for your friends.”

“Are we really doing this?” Fiona glares at him. “Have you forgotten how much you love money? What you’ve done to make your way to the top? How many people you’ve stabbed in the back and worse?”

“Well, I’m not doing that any more, am I?”

“You’re already reached the top, haven’t you?” Fiona grabs her hat from the coat rack. “Anyway, this isn’t about money. Besides, what was I supposed to do, tell my mark that I need to reschedule?”

“How about I come with you?” Rhys says, following her out onto the porch. “You can get the job done faster, and we’ll have time to return for the cake.”

“More like we might not return at all with you there.” Fiona checks her gun. “Bye, Rhys. Don’t follow me.”

THE END//

 

“Her loss,” Rhys says, sitting down at the computer in his office.

“Looking up causes of hair loss,” his computer says. “Possible cause number one. Stress-”

“Yeah, tell that to Fiona,” Rhys sighs.

“Sending email to Fiona,” it continues. “Dear Fiona-”

“No, no, that’s not what I want!” Rhys quickly presses the power button and holds it down until the computer shuts off.

After that close call, he has a relatively stress-free day. He goes to a meeting where he gets to vote on their new logo. He has an autograph session. He eats lunch sitting on the feet of his headless statue. He goes to a few more meetings that are supposedly crucial to the future of Atlas. Whenever he tries to voice his opinion in them, Yvette and Vaughn give him a warning glance, but all in all, it’s a pretty good day.

***

After work, Rhys goes straight to his new loft apartment, which has ample room, soft carpets, and large windows that look up to where the former Hyperion used to hang in the sky. He misses Hyperion sometimes, awful though it had become towards the end. It was a big part of his life. That’s where he learned how to successfully climb the corporate ladder. He’s not so sure he has the same skill for other things, like successfully romancing anyone. Romance requires a delicate touch, a give and take, a willingness to lower your guard and mark out your most vulnerable spot with your own hand. 

Rhys changes the bandages on his knees, puts on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and then he sits down on the couch to order dinner and decide whether or not he should call Sasha about the hat. She likes him better than she did last year, and she seems to have gotten over her crush on him. She has a nice boyfriend who is neither a criminal nor a corporate shill. She might want to pick up the hat. But, judging by the comment she made last night about that double date, she might not be happy that he has Fiona’s hat with him. It might be a better idea to hold onto it for now. Fiona can pick it up later. 

A quiet dinner is a good idea, Rhys decides. Then a good night’s sleep. Hopefully no questionable dreams about Fiona.

While he is waiting for dinner to be delivered, he checks his email and various social media accounts. He Likes photos of Athena glaring into the camera, Vaughn doing the Robot Shuffle, and Sasha blowing out the candles of her Happy Second Chance cake. He goes onto Fiona’s page, but she only has a few photos up on it, all of them months old and of Sasha. 

He closes his laptop, picks up Fiona’s hat, and goes over to the full-length mirror in the foyer. He stands there for a moment, looking at his reflection. He considers putting the hat on his head.

The truth is, he had been really grateful when Fiona called him last night to help her out. Her partner had bailed out on her at the last minute, so she needed him to play that girl’s role, with slight modifications. He was instructed to walk over to the table where Fiona would be dining with the mark and then “loudly and obnoxiously” talk about himself and his position as CEO of Atlas. Then he would have to vouch for her, say that she didn’t have any ulterior motives for wanting to see the treasure map. “A role you were born for,” Fiona said.

She was trying to convince the mark that she was an archivist who could verify the authenticity of old treasure maps. The mark was a suspicious, wary man and might change his mind about showing her the map at the last minute, or change his mind after showing it, which is why Rhys would have to 1. try to convince him that everything was legit, and 2. when the guy took the map out, quickly and sneakily take a photo of it with the sunglasses Fiona was going to give him. Rhys would have to wear the sunglasses on his head as part of his douchebag routine. “No problem,” Rhys had replied and left Vaughn’s party immediately.

The plan hadn’t gone according to plan. The mark got suspicious while Rhys was trying to take the picture, and Fiona ended up grabbing the map and the back of Rhys’s shirt, pulling them out of the banquet hall and into a smelly alley, wherein they had to climb up a fire escape and over several rooftops before they reached Atlas. Rhys scraped both his knees while climbing the fire escape, but he hasn’t had that much fun in weeks.

And now Rhys is staring at his reflection, Fiona’s hat in his hands. His face looks longer and more solemn than usual. He slaps his face with his left hand and says, “Get a grip, Rhys.”

 

//THE STORY - VERSION: THE HEART OF THE STORY

Rhys likes Fiona. He’s not sure when this happened to him, but it has, and now he thinks about Fiona every day, and he wants to see her every day and hear her yell at him and insult him and talk to him, casually familiar like they have been friends for a long time, affectionately. He almost begged Fiona to take him along on the treasure hunt. He would do it again. He wanted to kiss Fiona last night as she was leaving his office.

Fiona has a special talent for getting on his nerves, but there aren’t many people who can keep him on his toes like she does, who draws him out of his own head, who makes him want to be a better Rhys. It was easy to forgive Yvette when he remembered the things Fiona has done. Forgiving Felix. Talking Athena down from killing Cassius. Giving him, Rhys, a second chance, and choosing to trust him even after he told her about Handsome Jack. 

She wears many masks, each one carefully tailored for each con job, and it took some time for Rhys to trust her, but the real Fiona is a loving person, the kind of person who makes time to honor the memory of those who have helped her, even questionable types like Scooter. She would never stab a friend in the back, or choose money and treasure over them when it really counts.

Rhys wants to go on another adventure with Fiona, and this time, instead of only hinting that he might like her and that they make a good team, he might do something romantic, like brush her hair gently out of her face after they retrieve the treasure. Then he will kiss her right on the mouth, softly and then firmly, with lots of charm and talent and tongue. “Wow, Rhys,” she will say after getting her breath back. And then they will live happily ever after as CEO and Con Artist/Vault Hunter, having lots of hot sex and wonderful misadventures.

A guy can dream, right?

THE END//

 

When the doorbell rings, signaling that the food has arrived, Rhys puts the hat on the coat rack. He opens the door, takes the containers from the delivery robot, and tips it generously. He puts the food on the kitchen counter. Then he takes his cell phone out and texts Fiona.

***

Fiona arrives an hour later. She is in standard Fiona Attire, mostly, a red blazer with a stiff collar turned up, form-fitting pants, boots. Red lipstick. A new black beret. One new bruise, purpling at the right corner of her mouth.

Rhys wants to touch the bruise, trace a line up from it to the scar in her right eyebrow where hair doesn’t grow. But that would be silly and potentially life-threatening. He smiles instead and motions to the takeout containers he has laid out on the counter.

“Guess you’re hungry, huh?” he says. “You’ve turned down all my other invitations, but as soon as I mentioned dinner, you came over right away!”

Fiona looks around, says in a mild tone, “I came for my hat.”

“Clearly. Since you seem to have only one hat.”

She gives him a warning glance.

Rhys says, “Right, right, of course.”

She grabs the hat off the coat rack and twirls it on her finger.

“But,” he continues, “the question of the day is, _why_ did you leave it with me while I was sleeping, at a time you were supposed to be long gone from my office in the pursuit of treasure?”

“Why does it matter?” Fiona folds her arms.

“Of course it doesn’t matter,” he says, folding his arms as well. “Why are you asking?”

“You asked me first.”

“You asked me second.”

Fiona makes a frustrated noise, mutters, “Why do I bother?”

“Alright, alright.” Rhys holds his hands up and smiles in his most friendly and inviting manner. “Let’s forget all that. Stay. Have dinner.”

After glaring at him some more, Fiona walks into the kitchen and sits down at one of the stools. Encouraged, Rhys takes out a bottle of champagne and the silverware. When Fiona accepts the fork and spoon he holds out to her, he gives himself a mental pat on the back.

“Stop hovering over me and sit down already,” Fiona says.

“You got it, Ma’am.” Rhys pours the champagne into two flutes, fills two glasses with water, and then sits down on the stool next to her. “So. What do you think of the fried chicken? Looks good, doesn’t it?”

“Why? Did you cook it?”

“Wow, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.” Rhys puts a drumstick and helping of salad and rice on her plate. “Or, didn’t sleep at all. Or, spent part of the night with someone who annoys her? And then, failed to find the treasure she was chasing after?”

Fiona glances at him and then looks at her plate. She picks out the cranberries from the salad with her spoon and places them on his plate. She sips her water, leaving a red stain on the rim of the glass.

“No, none of that,” she says.

“None of what?”

“I found the treasure, and had an hour of sleep, and I wasn’t with any unpleasant company last night, unless you count that hour where I was talking to the mark and those few minutes where I had to beat up people who were trying to get in my way. Also, I wasn’t entirely honest with you when I asked you to come to the banquet hall. My partner was available, but I thought it would be more fun to have you there instead, so I asked her to take the night off.”

Rhys isn’t sure that he has heard her correctly until he sees the tip of Fiona’s left ear turning pink.

“Am I dreaming?” he asks. 

“How am I supposed to know?” Fiona asks.

“Never mind,” he says quickly. “But! Wow! You wanted me to be there?”

“I’m not repeating any of that,” she says, stabbing the drumstick on her plate with her knife. 

“You don’t have to.” He taps his temple. “I remember what you said perfectly. And … thanks. Thanks for inviting me.”

“Yeah.” Fiona clears her throat. She takes another sip of water. “The food tastes good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She holds out a spoonful of rice. “Here, you haven’t eaten anything yet.”

Rhys eats the rice off the spoon, and then he licks the spoon. Fiona raises an eyebrow. He laughs, says, “Hey, remember how angry you got when I drooled on you that one time? When we were tied up together? You spat right in my face! And look at us now, swapping saliva.”

“That hardly counts as swapping saliva,” she says. “But, this on the other hand …”

Fiona leans forward and kisses him full on the mouth, her lips firm and sure against his. He reaches out and grasps her jacket. When he opens his mouth, she licks his lower lip. He presses his hands to her waist. She touches his right knee, briefly, gently, and then moves her hand up into his hair.

She tastes of her lipstick, a little chemical and bitter, and like the food they are sharing, and a mint she must have been sucking on earlier, and warm, and eager. He pulls her closer, edges his knee between her legs. He wants to pull her onto his lap. He wants to kiss her and make sweet love to her over the kitchen counter. He wants this to last forever.

But, of course, when Fiona leans in too close and almost tips over, he ruins the mood by laughing. He couldn’t help it. The look of surprise on her face was funny.

“Ugh,” Fiona says, removing her hand from his hair. She puts her fingers over his mouth. “This is why you’re single.”

“Sorry,” Rhys mumbles. He kisses her fingers and tries to smile. “But am I still single?”

Fiona makes another exasperated noise, but then she picks her hat up and puts it on his head. 

“Maybe not,” she says.

Rhys likes the sound of that. He is beginning to think that he can do this romance thing, that maybe a future with Fiona doesn’t have to be an unfulfilled dream after all. When Fiona moves close to him again, he touches her knee. She puts a hand over his, twines their fingers together.

“Thanks for dinner,” she says.

“I’ve got more things planned for us,” Rhys says. “Want to find out what they are?”

“Alright,” Fiona agrees. She takes her beret off and places it on the counter. “Let’s see what you’ve got for me, Rhys.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
